Threes, Menage a Trois (1967) is a Nick Phillips nudie film, shot in
1967 in San Francisco. This film includes the French phrase
Menage a Trois in the title because French and Italian films
represented additional box office from the art house crowd. IMDb
lists it simply as Threes.

NUDITY REPORT

Jane Lako and four unknowns all show
everything, but the most explicit frame was in the trailer, but
not the film.

Jane Lako stars. As it opens, she is
walking along a beach, trying to come to grips with the fact that
her husband is dead. She explains their open marriage, her student
lover, a porn loop she watched that showed three women, a stripper
her husband watched, and finally how he died.

Threes shares many characteristics with most of the Phillips films:

It was shot in B & W with a minimal
plot designed only to bridge the gaps between nude scenes.

The plot is advanced by narration,
rather than dialogue

There is a score laid down by one of
many local jazz trios. Jazz trios were cheap, you could always find
one that wanted the work, and Nick liked jazz.

Phillips was prolific, but in order to find a lot of his titles, you
will have to combine the IMDb listings for Nick Millard and Steve
Millard, two of the dozens of aliases has used.

During that era, nudie films could be
exhibited in many major cities in the US with relative impunity, but
it was still illegal to make them, and doing so could get you
arrested in most places in the US. An exception was San Francisco,
where he made many of his films. These movies are, frankly, boring
as hell, but have a certain historical importance, and I have a
personal connection. I was in San Francisco during this time on a
Navy ship, and watched some of these films in North Beach. One of my
buddies advocated supporting them, even though they admittedly were
not at all good. His reasoning? If they make money, more people will
make them, and they will improve. I have to applaud Guilty Pleasures
for preserving these on DVD. Not only are they an important chapter
of sex in the cinema, but I enjoy the looks at 1960s San Francisco.

The meaning of the IMDb
score: 7.5 usually indicates a level of
excellence equivalent to about three and a half stars
from the critics. 6.0 usually indicates lukewarm
watchability, comparable to approximately two and a half stars
from the critics. The fives are generally not
worthwhile unless they are really your kind of
material, equivalent to about a two star rating from the critics,
or a C- from our system.
Films rated below five are generally awful even if you
like that kind of film - this score is roughly equivalent to one
and a half stars from the critics or a D on our scale. (Possibly even less,
depending on just how far below five the rating
is.

My own
guideline: A means the movie is so good it
will appeal to you even if you hate the genre. B means the movie is not
good enough to win you over if you hate the
genre, but is good enough to do so if you have an
open mind about this type of film. C means it will only
appeal to genre addicts, and has no crossover
appeal. (C+ means it has no crossover appeal, but
will be considered excellent by genre fans, while
C- indicates that it we found it to
be a poor movie although genre addicts find it watchable). D means you'll hate it even if you
like the genre. E means that you'll hate it even if
you love the genre. F means that the film is not only
unappealing across-the-board, but technically
inept as well. Any film rated C- or better is recommended for
fans of that type of film. Any film rated B- or better is
recommended for just about anyone. We don't score films below C-
that often, because we like movies and we think that most of
them have at least a solid niche audience. Now that you know
that, you should have serious reservations about any movie below
C-.

Based on this description, this is a C+. If the
genre is mid-60s nudie films, this must be a C+. The photography
is better than most, and it has more than the usual amount of
nudity, including full frontal. Of course, judged against real
movies, it is a zero star effort.